This disclosure pertains to machinery and methods for placing flexible bags and liners into packaging containers. It also pertains to cuffing the flexible bags and liners over an edge of the containers, such as cuffing plastic liner bags over the top edges of a cardboard box.
This invention arose from the need to more efficiently automate the insertion of flexible liner bags into packaging containers. It is also common to cuff the bags about a top edge of the containers during instertion. Both of these are preferably accomplished at high production rates.
Containers or cartons lined with flexible bags are widely used for packaging a variety of products including food products, electronics and many others. Numerous devices have been developed in an effort to effectively automate these processes. However, these devices continue to have various shortcomings and there remains a need for methods and apparatuses which will more quickly insert and preferably cuff flexible bags into cardboard cartons or other packaging containers.
The described embodiments of the present invention allows bag opening, insertion and cuffing processes to be accomplished independently for more effective and efficient operation. It uses at least one movable vacuum head to engage a flexible bag supplied by a bag dispenser. The vacuum heads engage the bag and then build sufficient vacuum. After vacuum is established, the moveable heads are parted to open and position the bag.
In the preferred apparatus, the vacuum head preferably engages the bag while an inserting mandrel or other insertion assembly is still in an extended position within the container which was previously lined. This allows vacuum to be established during a longer period of time, such as while cuffing and mandrel return operations are accomplished.
Engagement of the flexible bag by the vacuum heads allows vacuum to be developed earlier, so that the flexible bag may be moved into position for insertion into a container as soon as the insertion assembly is retracted. Prior devices returned the mandrel then brought the vacuum heads into contact with the liner bag. Developing vacuum thus delayed the operation.
The best mode of the invention uses a vacuum assembly, insertion assembly, and cuffing assembly to prepare, open, position and install a bag into a container, and to cuff the bag over the top edge of the container. These and other desirable aspects of the invention are described herein.